Tag: American Ballet Theater

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Creating New Dance Icons: David Michalek’s "Slow Dance"

Yesterday morning, I got up way too early (for me, on a weekend anyway), to run down to Lincoln Center and take some pictures of what I just knew would be a huge line. The New York City Ballet distributed free tickets to the April 29th dress rehearsal of their new production of Romeo & Juliet. Tickets were given out on a first-come, first-served basis, and distribution was to begin at 9:00. I got there at 8:50, and here was the line:

 

It wrapped all the way around the State Theater to Fordham Law School! There was no way I could take the time to wait in it, and, from what I heard later in the day, you really had to have got there around 7:30 or earlier to get a ticket. Although, apparently, from what we heard later, they gave people who waited in line but were unable to get a ticket, a free admission to a non-dress rehearsal, that normally only sponsors are invited to, which sounds really nice as well! Anyway, very happy to see so many people interested in ballet 🙂

 

 

Then, it was such a nice spring day — the first in New York! — so I walked through the park to what seems to be becoming a weekly event for me, the Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series. This one, “Slow Dancing,” was super cool. David Michalek, a film director and portrait photographer, as well as husband of New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan, is currently creating a public art film installation to be viewed during the Lincoln Center festival this summer. Basically, he took five seconds’ worth of footage of 45 different dancers from various dance styles — ranging from flamenco, Indian, break-dancing and krumping to of course Ballet — slowed it way way WAY down, using a highly specialized camera that has heretofore been used only by the military and NASA for weapons and rocket launch analyses respectively (!), and projected them onto a 50-foot high screen. During the festival, three such enormous screens will be hung on the outside the walls of the State Theater (pictured above in the top two pics) and, each night after dark, the images of the dancers — three at a time and moving in extreme slow motion, will be projected onto them.

So, we got to see how this was made last night. Three dance giants — Wendy Whelan (of course!), Herman Cornejo from ABT, and Desmond Richardson — each came out onstage and did a five-second solo. (Michalek joked that this was the only time we’d ever see dancers of this stature dance on a stage for a mere five seconds!) The camera recorded the movement, and after each dancer finished and exited the stage, we viewed what had been recorded in the slow timing.

It was so incredibly amazing it’s hard even to describe. With the image slowed to such a great extent and projected onto such a huge screen, you could just see so much that you never saw before, and it gave you so much more respect for the dancer to see how perfectly, how miraculously really, his or her body actually worked to make the huge jump, difficult turn, or beautiful line really happen. Richardson, exclaiming that as a dancer he was “ecstatic and inspired,” said that “to see the actual muscle fibers … really shows the work.” It’s so true: I noticed with Richardson, whose musculature is so pronounded, that, in contrast to a photo where you see the muscles but without seeing them actually work, viewing them contract, lengthen, expand, and flex during each part of a jump is so incredible that it makes the jump so much more astounding than just seeing it caught in a still picture. With Herman, I noticed that his feet practically make semi-circles when he points, and they remain pointed right until the very millisecond he lands. I noticed the gorgeous lines Wendy made with her arms, legs, feet, and hands, and her defined leg and arm muscles as well.

Of course as a dancer you’d have to have an ego of steel to allow yourself to be filmed in such a way! You see every detail, and every asymmetry, every flaw, if you could even call it that. Michalek said that Whelan, upon seeing herself onscreen for the first time, was really upset about her knees “buckling” when she jumped, and, during the panel discussion, when asked how she now felt, with sweetly self-deprecating humor, she just exhaled and said, “oh, I’ve come to embrace my imperfections…” Everyone laughed because, it’s like, what imperfections?!… I did notice she was pretty nervous when being video-taped though — you could really see her left hand tremble during the slowed film.

What impressed me most though was how it really had an iconic effect on the, literally, larger-than-life performer. Michalek said, seeing so many pictures of his beautiful wife and her colleagues made him dismayed at the limits of traditional dance photography to capture the monumental nature of the body in motion.

Allowing — almost forcing the viewer to examine closely what it is that makes each particular dancer so great — Richardson’s musculature and strength, Wendy’s beautiful lines, and Herman’s beyond perfect technique and the personality emanated through his eyes — has a kind of heroizing effect. Regarding those eyes: perhaps I am weird, but I seem to focus a lot on faces a lot when I attend a dance performance. I noticed that both Richardson and Whelan closed their eyes a lot, or looked down so that it looked as if they were. I wondered how they did that — if I closed my eyes I would lose all sense of place and direction; I would have no idea where the floor was. It was this, I felt, that gave their dancing a very ethereal feel and was part of their own particular artistry.

Herman was the exact opposite. His eyes never closed. At the beginning, when he first took the stage, they were focused straight out at the audience; I was sitting in the center of the fourth row and it was kind of freaky how it looked like he was looking right at me, in a proud, but almost confrontational way. Then, as he began his jump, his eyes remained wide open and directed firmly out at us; it was only when he went to land that they briefly glanced down at the floor so he could get his sense of place. Then, he immediately went into another jump, this time with a turn, and it was so incredible to see his eyes remain widely, alertly opened, and his gaze directed in the same place, until he had to rotate his head to complete the turn. His eyes, I felt gave him a very solid, very masculine “thereness” or presence, that I suppose is perhaps a Latin thing. I bet if Jose Carreno or Angel Corella were filmed, their eyes would be the same. I think that is what so draws me to ABT.

Anyway, the reception was a lot of fun as well. Doug Fox was in town, so I convinced him to meet me there, and he was very glad he did since the techie aspect of it was right up his alley. And, speaking of other brilliant techies (not to mention great dancers!), we ran into Kristin Sloan and her boyfriend, Doug Jaeger, as well 🙂

All of these dancer whom they chose to exhibit last night, though, were pretty similar in terms of body-type and obviously style of dance. It’ll be interesting to see the break and belly dancers. Definitely do not miss this spectacular celebration of dance. It’s showing outdoors at Lincoln Center from July 20th though 29th, from the hours of 9:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m.

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Test Run: Max and Yulia's Awesome Samba

Okay Doug Fox came to NYC this weekend and, being the amazingly sweet guy he is, helped me figure out how to embed YouTube videos in my crazy blog. WordPress is officially a pain in the butt… Anyway, if this works, here are two of my favorite U.S. Latin dancers doing their Samba from last year’s Ohio Star Ball / America’s Ballroom Challenge.

Note: I had to end up deleting this post because it made my blog all crazy-looking. Methinks WordPress does not take kindly to YouTube…

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Lar Lubovitch And His Phalanx of Cute Guys, Julianne’s Awesome Samba on DWTS, and Fabulously Weird Boris Eifman

Sorry this post is about so many diverse dancey things; just too busy and have to blog all at once…

Last night I went to see the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company at the Skirball Center at NYU. Three works were performed, two of which were world premieres: “Little Rhapsodies” starring Dance Magazine readers’ “sexiest dancer of the year,” Rasta Thomas 🙂

 

along with Jay Franke and the amazing Sean Stewart; and “Dvorak Serenade,” featuring Drew Jacoby, one of the most beautifully muscular women I’ve seen. I really liked “Rhapsodies,” the piece for the three men, which, set to Robert Schumann music, was by turns cute and sexy, humorous, jazzy, and lyrical. And, Thomas 🙂 He really is good-looking, with a very charming stage personality. The piece was kind of quietly, sweetly understated until about three-quarters of the way through, when he came running out and did this spectacular tour jete (that’s a turn and leap all in one — go here and look up jete entrelace to see Vladminir Malakhov demonstrate). The Serenade was beautiful as well: lyrical with light, diaphonous costumes on both women and men. A contemporary piece, there was no pointe work, so you could really see the dancers’ gorgeously arched feet, particularly Jacoby’s.

My favorite piece of the night though was “Love’s Stories,” from 2005, with three pretty, lifty duets by various couples, and two jazzy solos by Stewart. That man has no bones in his arms at all — they moved so fluidly and at times with such speed they were a shadowy blur. The second pas de deux was my favorite: “Prelude to Kiss,” danced by Marty Lawson and Kate Skarpetowska. One of the most romantic, sexiest I’ve ever seen — at the end he tugs her top straps down her shoulders and plants a passionate kiss on her neck; she collapses in his arms … yes, if a man wants to kiss you, he should be so bold — but only after picking you up and carrying you all around the room for a good 10 minutes 🙂

Also, I just have to say, there were all these good-looking guys in the audience. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many at one performance. I wondered if they were dancers. During the first intermission, Mr. Lubovitch quietly, nonchalantly walked into the orchestra and took a seat two rows down from me. At the second intermission, all the cute guys immediately gravitated toward him, where they hovered about, chatting him up. So, they were dancers, or at least involved in dance, and with Lar. So, there it is: go to a Lar Lubovitch performance and see hot guys 🙂 — both onstage and in the audience 🙂

Anyway, I was surprised to see that the house was not very packed. People are paying big bucks to see Thomas dance Othello at the Met in the spring, but you can see him up close for only $40 here… There are two programs; Program B, which I didn’t see, includes a piece performed by the Limon Dance Company but excludes Stewart’s solos from Love’s Stories. It’s on through the 21st; go here for tickets.

Onto Dancing With the Stars. The highlight for me this week was definitely Julianne Hough‘s samba. When I first saw her walks, I thought, wow, she’s a pro and she’s not doing those cruzado walks with the proper technique at all. But boy did they look enticing. And they also looked familiar. After she did that mad fun squatting pelvic roll with undulating rib cage, which I’ve never seen in ballroom but have most definitely seen in Quenia Ribeiro‘s Rio / Carnival-style class at the Ailey studios, I realized that those alternative, rather runway-looking cruzado walks were familiar to me because I’ve seen them on Quenia’s tape, as well as in Carnival videos on YouTube. She was basically fusing formal, ballroom samba with the social, Rio-style form of the dance, and to very fun effect. I thought she was simply beautiful! And obviously the judges felt the same since they had Apolo and her re-perform their routine last night. I’ve often found this rather annoying reluctance by ballroom dancers to think outside the official syllabi so I really appreciate someone who can and will do that. So go Julianne!!!

That said, of course I’m annoyed that Heather was in the bottom two, over John, especially after the judges said something to her that really resonated with me– that she, more than anyone else, really knew how to let loose, have fun, and act like no one was watching, which is, I think, the first hurdle any beginning dancer has to overcome… you can’t free yourself to dance until you’ve made the decision to shed certain inhibitions. Well, she may well not be on the show after next week, and, at this point, I just feel like throwing my hands up and saying, ‘oh well… what can you do?’ I kind of liked Clyde too, personality-wise — he was such a sweet little thing … or sweet big thing rather! — but he wasn’t that good dance-wise, so it’s okay that he’s gone…

I also like that they’re showing the celebrities having “normal” busy lives. This is how real people who take ballroom dance lessons are as well — okay, we’re not out filming episodes of our TV shows and traveling to China and England every weekend, but we have jobs, we work, and we’re not professional dancers who spend 80 hours a week in the studio. So, I felt like that kind of sent a jolt of reality into the dancing aspect of the show: see, you can only get so good when you actually have to work for a living and dance isn’t your full-time occupation.

Tonight I went to see the “The Seagull” by the Eifman Ballet, a company based in St. Petersburg, Russia. When I’d gone to her reading a couple of weeks ago, critic Joan Acocella called choreographer Boris Eifman “a menace to society.” She did this in an eye-rolling, definitely not joking way. After seeing them tonight, I have to say, I have no idea what she was talking about. Actually, that’s not true — I could see how someone might feel that way about his work. But, for me, this was one of the best performances I’ve seen this year. It was fantastically weird, over the top, melodramatic, completely angst-filled, over-acted, by turns mesmerizingly beautiful, creepy, and frightening, and, as one person sitting near me said, “chaotic.” But to me all that’s exactly what made it. For one thing it was the antithesis of boring — don’t think I’ve ever been so entranced all the way through a full-length ballet; for another, I felt like Eifman was kind of ridiculing the melodrama of classical ballet. If he’s a “menace” to the dance world; it’s a menace in a good kind of way — someone who holds a kind of funhouse mirror up to something revered, compelling you to think about what you’re seeing. The main music was by Rachmaninoff, flavored with interludes of hip hop and techno. A modern reinterpretation of the classical and based on the Chekhov play, the choreography was stunning, the sets were used to brilliant effect, and the dancers were just incredible. It was like a company of all Wendy Whelans or something– everyone, men and women alike, had that long, beyond thin, hyper-flexible, sinewy-muscled body that moved as if there were no ligaments or tendons whatsoever to constrict it. And, I just feel like Russians just own the world of ballet, both classical and modern, — they just do. Even the hip hop was rapturous. When I left City Center tonight, I felt more than ever before how much I regret giving up dance as a child…

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Oops, I’m Weird…

 

I am the exact opposite of everyone else on the planet. I am so anal (usually anyway) about turning my cell phone to silent during a performance that I often actually forget to turn it back to ring when I leave. So, today, not feeling so well, I tried to take it easy all day to save my energy for my two-hour-long evening lesson. I managed to haul myself out the door, down the stairs, through the rain and on the crowded subway, to my studio, only to be told by the receptionist upon my arrival that my teacher had to cancel due to illness – -she’d left a message on my cell, she said, flustered and feeling badly. Of course she did, and of course I didn’t hear the blasted phone since it was on silent from when I saw ABT’s Works & Process at the Guggenheim last night…

It turned out okay since I felt on the verge of passing out when I walked into the studio anyway and wasn’t sure how I’d make it through two whole hours of working on a fast-paced routine. Problem is, I’m now about 99.99% sure that I cannot do the performance on May 7th. It’s just too close, and with Luis only being able to be in the studio on Monday nights, that means I only have two more lessons until then, and I’m still extremely shaky on the choreography, which has changed numerous times now.

It’s also very hard for me, because — and this is another way in which I’m weird — I’ve learned that foxtrot, and all of Standard ballroom, is very difficult for me because of my odd tendency to walk toward the balls of my feet, never ever using my heels. I don’t know whether it was taking ballet as a very small child or all the Latin I’ve had, which is always always ALWAYS toe heel, and never heel toe, but I just can’t seem to get the basic walk right. Not that technique has to be perfect for a showcase, but if you don’t walk heel toe going forward and then walk through the entire foot going backward, completely lifting your whole foot except your heel at the end of your step, your partner can very easily trip over you.

My first ballroom teacher, the very sweet Linda Gammon, actually figured out that I was “weird” in this respect. Frustrated with what seemed to be a lack of understanding in class one day, she had me walk backwards around the room, “like normal.” Turned out, my toes never left the floor, and my heels hardly ever touched it. So, I basically looked like I was jogging backward in slow-motion (how you’d keep to the balls of your feet to gain momentum if you were doing such a thing). Anyway, I remember her saying, in her cute, jocular way, that I’d have to learn how to walk like a normal person before learning Standard ballroom. Anyway, since I focused on Latin, I never bothered to learn how to be “normal.” 🙂

I don’t know how clear these pictures are but I’ve tried to illustrate what I mean with them: first is the heel toe Standard way; second is toe heel the Latin way:

 

I mean, the Latin photo doesn’t look completely right because I should be wearing open-toed shoes for Latin; can’t get much of a pointed toe out of these. But, I don’t have a pedicure and I’m not photographing my feet right now in open-toed shoes, so hopefully the picture is still understandable!

Anyway, this failure to ever “learn to be normal” is a problem for me now with this routine since it’s been changed into a basic foxtrot. Originally, I’d taken the DVD of Baryshnikov and ballerina Elaine Kudo performing Twyla Tharp’s Sinatra Suite to my studio to ask teachers and coaches if I could do something similar for my student showcase.

By this I meant I wanted them to take one of the pieces in the suite (they’re all fundamentally ballet, but one of Tharp’s things is to combine popular dance with ballet and so she did that here by combining various standard ballroom dances with ballet, choreographing a tango-styled one, a waltz-styled one, and a foxtrot-styled one), and take out the most difficult things and maybe put in a few very basic standard ballroom steps (from waltz, foxtrot, etc.) and that would be my routine. We’d chosen the foxtrot because, to the original teacher, the music seemed the most fun, though he wanted to change the actual song, and to me, I liked the snazzy, sassy character of Tharp’s choreography (especially as acted by Marcelo 🙂 ). I knew, though, that that one was choreographically the hardest of all of the ‘suites,’ and expected a lot to be changed, but was still excited to work my hardest and really try.

Anyway, I’m not sure what happened, if it was all a misunderstanding or if, more likely, I was asking ballroom dancers to choreograph something for me that wasn’t at its heart ballroom and they just didn’t know how to do it, but I ended up with a very basic foxtrot routine with some fun steps and a couple of cool lifts, but that bears absolutely no similarity whatsoever to what I’d originally wanted. And I tell myself that that’s okay because I’m learning foxtrot, which I didn’t know before, and it is a cute routine, and somewhat Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire-esque (although when I tried to emulate her I was told I was doing it wrong because I was too light and feathery and not bending my knees and going far enough into the ground, as should be done in foxtrot).

Anyway, I hate to be overly practical and money-obsessed, but it’s very very VERY expensive to me to participate in these showcases. I understand why they have to charge so much because there are a lot of people to pay in order to make the show happen… but, I’m sorry for sounding ridiculous but it’s just too expensive for me to do a basic foxtrot routine. I need to be doing things I really really want to learn that are so hard that they push me beyond my natural limits.

I’m going on for far too long, and being very boring, but I guess I’m just having such a conflict because I’m so not a quitter. And I hate the idea of quitting this routine, but I think I have to… because I’m not in love with it, because all I can see is dollar signs, because I can’t get a simple heel toe walk right, and because there’s just no time… Ugh, I just HATE being a quitter!!!!! I HATE it!!!

I’ll still of course buy a ticket and go watch all of my friends perform, but I know I’ll be so sad to not be part of the action myself…

Anyway, on a totally different note: I almost forgot since I was so under the weather today, but:

 

four weeks, just four more weeks, just four weeks!!!!!!!!!

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Aye Yay Yay…

Last night I went to see a discussion and demonstration of ABT‘s SLEEPING BEAUTY at the Guggenheim as part of the museum’s Works & Process series (in which the producers talk about the making of a new ballet and have a few dancers demonstrate some of the choreography). I’d attended their talk on OTHELLO a couple months ago and learned a lot about the history of that ballet and choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s intentions, and got to see some amazing dancing (David Hallberg 🙂 ) from very close.

Well, I didn’t feel this one went quite as smoothly.

Kevin McKenzie, ABT artistic director and choreographer of this new production, was out sick, so Wes Chapman moderated a discussion between famed former ballerina Gelsey Kirkland who is helping to put this production together by coaching the dancers, and her husband Michael Chernov.

First, five ballerinas — Maria Riccetto, Kristi Boone, Yuriko Kajiya, Zhong-Jing Fang, and Adrienne Schulte — performed the Fairies Variations. After each danced, Kirkland would come onstage and ‘coach them’ right in front of us! I don’t know if it was intended to be this way — if they were trying to show what a hard life a dancer leads or trying to showcase Kirkland as a strict but brilliant former ballerina and current teacher or what, but I’m sorry, I thought it was just not a good idea. She came across as really quite mean to the dancers. She started with Riccetto, telling her she was supposed to, as she’d told her before, show the audience “the child” ie: Sleeping Beauty, which she was supposed to be carrying in her arms. She had Riccetto do it over a few times, and, at the end of the third, Kirkland turned to the audience and asked us if we “saw the child.” Of course everyone wanted to please Kirkland, and of course we couldn’t see any child because there were no props, as it was a work in progress hello, so everyone said “oh no.” Riccetto looked so embarrassed. I felt just horrible for her.

Then, poor Kristi Boone, who I really like, came out and performed her solo. It seemed like everyone was so scared of Kirkland, like they were trying very hard but were just so shaky. At the end of Boone’s variation, Kirkland told her her movement was so lacking in fluidity she kept looking like she was simply ‘reaching for a bowl of cereal’ when she stretched upward, then kind of scolded her, saying, “I told you how to do this yesterday, we talked about it yesterday. I know it’s hard, but do it again.” And she made her repeat it a couple of times for us.

After she finished with Boone, poor Kajiya, who has the sweetest most innocent-looking face, came out and did her solo looking like she was going to faint from the pressure the entire time. Kirkland was hard on her too, but I don’t even remember what she said; I just couldn’t listen; I couldn’t even look anymore. I just remember she told Kajiya to do something over, and Kajiya tried, but the pianist played the wrong part, so Kajiya performed the part he played, then was told by Kirkland she’d done the wrong part, which she seemed to know but was too sweet to correct the pianist. Nightmare!

After Kaijya fled to safety, Chapman asked the audience, “are you all finding this helpful?” And I couldn’t help it but I shouted out “No,” and shook my head dramatically. I’m sure they didn’t hear my soft voice in the sea of “yesses” and couldn’t see my head shaking, but somehow someone knew it had to be toned down because Kirkland was much better after that. Fang escaped without a single correction, and Schulte only had to do her “trouble spot” over once.

Then they talked a bit about the costumes and set designs. At a few points, Kirkland and Chernov disagreed over whether a particular costume was still in the works or whether they’d changed the design, and then whether they’d completely changed it or slightly altered it. And then there was a bit of disagreement on whether to call the cavaliers (the men) “knights” or “elves,” — Chapman, who seemed like he was trying very hard to keep things running smoothly, nicely asked for audience input, and we all shouted out, almost in unison, “Knights!” I have to say, it was Kirkland’s suggestion to change “elves” to “knights” so she was definitely on the pulse on that one.

After the discussion, Irina Dvorovenko, the only principal who danced this evening, came out and performed the beautiful Rose Adagio (in which Beauty is courted by four gorgeous guys, and which involves extremely difficult balances and partnering). Her suitors were Blaine Hoven (who looked like he had a bit of a cold), Jared Matthews, Patrick Ogle, and Isaac Stappas (who is, hello, really quite good-looking — did I know that???). Anyway, annoyingly, Kirkland was again hard on Dvorovenko, but let all the guys escape without a single word of criticism. I realize Kirkland is a former ballerina, and so is helping to coach the women, but it’s just a pet peeve of mine for someone to be hard on only one group of people.

Anyway, poor Irina, another favorite of mine… To her credit, Kirkland tried to be kind, telling the audience Irina was a great ballerina and it was a true pleasure to work with her, and that there were only a few minor things … then began ripping her. What she wanted Irina to keep doing over was basically an acting job. She said it was very hard for a dancer to keep from playing to the audience, and to maintain “a fourth wall,” then asked her several times to re-perform a look of “wonderment” upon seeing … something … presents maybe? That’s the thing: I don’t think the audience really understood what was even going on between Kirkland and the dancers, what exactly the dancers were supposed to be doing that they weren’t. But poor Irina: the Guggenheim is obviously ridiculously small compared to the Met Opera House, and here she’s standing in front of maybe a hundred people, the closest all of five feet away from her face, having to do this huge, over-the-top acting job of making a face of “wonderment” and pretending to project out into the Family Circle hundreds of feet away at the Met … it was so embarrassing for her. I really felt all of the dancers’ embarrassment.

Then, another discussion ensued, followed by, finally!, newly-promoted Craig Salstein dancing an all too short Bluebird Adagio with pretty (and, by this time, courageous) Riccetto.

I mean, all in all it was an interesting night. I think it drove home to audiences how hard dancers — at least the women — work when being coached by someone with Kirkland’s stature and personality, and how hard the life of a ballerina can be in that regard. At least that was made clear to me. And I have to say, to me at least, it was upetting. Like I said, if they did hear me shout out “No,” I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was just very bothered. Maybe others didn’t care. But, for me, and for many I think, the dancers ARE the company; we see them more than anyone else and we relate to them more than anyone or anything else in ABT, and we don’t like to see our favorites get picked on! (Plus, the gentleman next to me was snoozing, and my “no” did wake him up, at least momentarily, so I feel like my actions weren’t all bad :))

The night also made clear how difficult it must be to put something together when people are disagreeing about how things should be. It seems like a pretty ballet, and hopefully it’ll get there by the time it premieres. Chapman, in impressing the importance of this production to us, said, “ABT without a Sleeping Beauty: it’s like we’re not America’s National Ballet Company anymore…” I personally don’t know if that’s true — is it really that fundamental of a ballet? — but, in any event, it should be interesting to see how it all comes together. I’ll be excited to see Marcelo and all my other favorites perform it anyway 🙂

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Crappy Day

 

It’s about how ballet-styled clothes and makeup have been all the rage on the runways of late. And, gives a little advice on how to do your makeup like a real prima: for ‘Coppelia eyes’ apply false lashes at the outer corners and blue pink lipstick, it says. Blue pink lipstick? Hmmm?

But, looking at the actual clothes, I don’t think the dresses are anything special at all. Just some light pink and white silk with lacy outer layers, flowers in the hair, and way over-the-top pointe-style sandals with laces climbing all the way to the knee. Why don’t they make dresses is that beautiful silvery lavender from Christopher Wheeldon’s Evenfall… so dreamy… and totally bring on the tulle! It’d make a gorgeous springy dress.

And, I’m not feeling so hot. Throat’s a little scratchy. I hope I’m not coming down with something. This is so not the time with foxtrot showcase and Blackpool and end-of-the-fiscal-year deadlines at work all coming up…

My yummy lunch:

I know it’s not so good for me; it’s just all I want to eat with a sore throat…

Al, on the cover of the Style Mag was this actress, Paula Patton. I’ve been roaming around YouTube this rainy day looking at new videos of Carnival coverage in Rio and I swear she was one of the celebrities wearing a glamour bikini. Does anyone know if she was there?

I have to say, something really depressed me and maybe – hopefully — it was just the videos I saw, but Carnival looks rather dangerous for women. Lots of men grabbing and groping women and with no accountability for their actions. Like the Puerto Rico day parade here that year when there was all the sexual abuse. Are women respected anywhere in the world? It’s so upsetting to me… Hopefully Craig Salstein and whoever else is at Guggenheim tonight will pull me out of my blue funk…

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Misnomer and Keigwin & Co. at Skirball Center

On Thursday night, Tony Schultz from the Winger invited me to an evening of performances by two fabulously innovative and engaging modern dance companies, Misnomer and Keigwin and Company. It was my first time being ‘comped in’ as a ‘press member’ and it was very exciting! Thank you Tony 🙂 🙂

After the performances, they had an after-show dance party, so that is what the above picture is about — regular people kicking off their shoes and preparing to take to the stage themselves! Both of these companies seem to have a kind of “bring dance to the people” mission, albeit executed in different ways. Misnomer has a very cool website, one of the most intricate I’ve seen by a dance company, and Chris Elam, the artistic director, has expounded an audience outreach initiative that landed him in the pages of Business Week. Keigwin, on the other hand, from what I’ve seen by him so far, seems interested in questioning / bridging the so-called “high-art / low-art” dichotomy by including in his modern pieces burlesque and vaudeville artists — as in Keigwin Kabaret, which I recently blogged about — or, as in his new piece celebrating NYC life — BOLERO NYC (which just debuted on Thursday) — by involving non-dance-trained actors and just regular people from the streets. So, I felt the dance party following the performance was kind of a continuation of that, a continuation of BOLERO NYC, saying dance is for everyone.

Anyway, this was my first time seeing Misnomer, and they were unlike anything I’ve ever seen. First, Chris Elam performed a mesmerizing solo, CAST-IRON CRUTCHES. The man just moves in the most incredible ways; he’s like a one-man Pilobolus or something. It looked somewhat animalistic but really really beautiful. His solo was followed by a short film depicting busy people on a crowded stairway, which was really cool — sometimes the heads and faces were such a blur I couldn’t tell whether they were going up or down. And, then he premiered his longer work performed by the whole company, FUTURE PERFECT, a sweet, humorous, thought-provoking take on human social and romantic interactions. I’ve read that he gets a lot of his ideas from his world travels and it is clear that he is an astute observer of other cultures and peoples; I think this is what makes his work so different and intriguing. Here are a couple of pictures of Elam from Misnomer’s website.

 

 

And go here for video snippets of FUTURE PERFECT during rehearsal.

This was my second time seeing Keigwin (first was the Kabaret), and, again, I really enjoyed them. His stuff is very fast-paced, sometimes aerobic (as in CAFFEINATED), oftentimes humorous and gender-bending (at one point, in the second piece, NATURAL SELECTION, Nicole Wolcott, whom I just love, carried small but powerful Julian Barnett), and filled with lots of incredible feats (Ying-Ying Shiau running sideways along a back wall assisted by two men), and dynamic, energetic dancing to fast, pulsing music. Liz Riga stood out to me more this time. She has a commanding presence and fills up the stage with her movement. Oh, and correction: I realized, Alexander Gish, who was in Thursday’s performance, was not the guy I said he was in Kabaret, who did the little cherub-faced waiter with the butcher knife number. I’m not sure who that guy was, but I saw him in the audience Thursday night! Here are a couple of pictures from their website:

The show is happening again tonight, Saturday, at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU. Very interesting, very innovative and loads of fun with after-party for everyone including dancing onstage and alcohol and little snacky foods in the lobby 🙂

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Help, I Don’t Want a Lap Dance!!!

Last night Alyssa and I went to see the closing night of Keigwin Kabaret at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. Here we are with our little silver tambourines that were atop each seat’s armrests when we arrived. If audience tambourines are supplied, you know you’re in for a little zaniness!

Anyway, the show didn’t start until 8:30, so we met at Cleopatra’s Needle beforehand, where we caught the beginning of a jazz band and got some drinks and snacks.

I have GOT to stop snacking at night on chocolate martinis and french fries … I’ve gained five pounds in the last couple of weeks; Luis is going to drop me flat on my butt in my lesson tomorrow night…

Anyway, even with the fries to soak up the alcohol, the martini was rather strong and by the time we arrived at Symphony Space, we (or I anyway) were a little tipsy. When we sprinted into the lobby ten minutes before the show was to begin, and the usher asked us which show we were there for so as to direct us either to the upstairs or downstairs theater, we looked at each other quizzically. I’d completely forgotten the name… Alyssa, quicker than I, blurted out “Gender!” and the guy told us, “downstairs.” No gender upstairs, nope, all gender is downstairs…

When we got downstairs, the place was pretty full and the only available seats were in the first two rows. A bit of a tiff eruped between us and several other near-late-comers, over who would have to sit in the first row. “What are they going to be doing,” one woman shrieked? “I don’t want a lap dance!” No one up front at least seemed to know what to expect. Alyssa and I eventually ended up with the highly coveted second-row seats, I am, as it turned out, very happy to say! Note to everyone who is unfamiliar with extreme hyperactive drag king extraordinare, Murray Hill: if you’re a shy, non-audience-participation-type, DO NOT SIT IN THE FRONT ROW OR ANYWHERE NEAR IT when seeing a show that he emcees. Alyssa and I seemed to be either too non-visible and uninteresting, or else too obviously completely freaked out, to be his fodder, but an unfortunate but well-humored guy in the first row who happened to be wearing a colorful, Christmas-y sweater, was not so lucky. Nor were the people in back of us, nor the guy in back of them … but more on HIM later…

Anyway, the, as the name implies, cabaret-style show, was a lot of fun. The company’s artistic director, Larry Keigwin, was a great dancer (and really cute to boot!), and I LOVED assistant artistic director Nicole Wolcott. She was such a beautiful dancer. I so wanna be like her! Seriously, she really makes me want to learn modern now. She made it seem freeing and fun while also being based in solid formal technique, if that makes any sense, and she just moved so amazingly gorgeously in her solo, to “Stand Back” by Stevie Nicks. I also really liked her duet with Keigwin, a tango-y kind of thing to French music, the first part of which involved chokehold-drop (what they’re called in ballroom anyway) after chokehold-drop. This is where the man wraps his hands around the woman’s neck and it looks like he’s strangling her, then drops her into a dangerous-looking dip. Teachers of mine have wanted to put it into my routines, but I’ve refused to do it because it seems dangerous to me (all the more so since I’m a frightened amateur who doesn’t really know what she’s doing) and because I feel like it just looks somewhat misogynistic. But, since this was a gender-bender thing and they were specifically questioning that, it worked here. Although, I would have preferred for her to do it to him a few times as well, but perhaps it is hard for a woman to balance a man’s body that way … but isn’t that what gender-bending stuff is made of…?

Anyway, the show was a combo of modern dance performed by Keigwin and Wolcott and their company, which includes Patrick Ferreri (who’s damn cute! and performed a hilarious drunk-off-his-butt riff on Tharp’s final Sinatra Suite, danced to One For My Baby, which I think Angel should DEFINITELY try out on ABT audiences next time he performs it 🙂 ), and Julian Barnett (who did this sweetly endearing thing to a heavy mental number on overcoming being a picked-on gay kid). And, there were the cabaret performers including my favorite Mike Albo, who did this scream-inducing parody of TV show “Ugly Betty” by mimicking the gay male character who plays the slavish, somewhat whorish employee of Vanessa Williams’ Cruella deVillish boss and sidekick to her scheming receptionist, Amanda. Other dancers included Ying-Ying Shiau, Liz Riga, Alexander Gish (who portrayed a cute but frightening cherub-faced waiter who got a little over excited about a big ole butcher knife he carried around in his pocket), and Jamacian burlesque dancer Akynos, whose pasty came off at the end of her number, leading her to finish with her left hand over her breast. How do those things stay on anyway???

One of the craziest parts of the evening was when they ran this audience-participation contest, drawing three people out of the audience at seemingly random to compete in ‘sexiest in dance’ to Justin Timberlake music. Hill picked on the guy from the fourth row who was cackling loudly throughout, and insisted he come up onstage to be the male contestant. Hill kept calling him “a gay” while he was in the audience, and when he got onstage, Hill said, “Oh, I thought you were a gay out there in the audience, but now that you’re up here I see that you’re not one at all.” Alyssa and I were DYING of embarrassment; he is nuts. Anyway, I don’t know if this guy was part of the act, but after initially looking out at the audience, like, crap, what did I get myself into, he proceeded to, I swear, perform the funniest, sexiest, cutest, lewdest cheesecake / beefcake strip-tease I’ve ever seen. Afterward, Hill asked him what he did for a living and he said vaguely that he was in show-biz. Don’t know who he is, but I definitely want to see him again! I don’t know what the guy’s sexuality was — I try not to make assumptions since I’m usually wrong — but if Hill was right in his final analysis, I think it’s perhaps funniest to see straight men who are freaking out try to do strip-tease…

All in all, I thought it was fun, though, I have to say, it was billed as part of a several-part program Symphony Space is doing entitled “Gender Benders,” and nothing besides the presence of Murray Hill, who is the biggest walking talking gender bender I’ve ever seen, challenged my notions of gender. I guess Shiau and Riga ridiculed the male gaze, the former by standing at the edge of the stage doing nothing more than licking an ice cream cone, the latter by kind of “talking” with her breasts with the assistance of Wolcott, standing behind her; and there were plenty of gay men humorously grabbing their crotches and riffing on both straight and gay male identities, etc. Hill remarked that he’s never been north of 23rd Street (though I saw him at the Supper Club, in Times Square, not long ago…), acting like it’s such a big deal to be all the way uptown, but uptown is still New York City, for cry-eye. This kind of show is more needed for the middle-Americans who frequent Hooters and drool over the waitresses’ tight shirts only to have near-nervous breakdowns when people like Matt and his fellow ABT guys sing at the bar. Also, I found it interesting how the audience would go “woooo” and hoot anytime the women were onstage being ‘sexy’, but when the men were on grabbing their crotches, everyone laughed. I just think as a society in general, we’re still very uncomfortable “objectifying” men the same way we do women… Anyway, Keigwin & Co. will be performing at Skirball Center near NYU next week. I definitely want to see more of them!

Just really quickly since this post is now about 100,000 words long, Friday night, on Gia’s Winger recommendation again, I went to see “Becky, Jodi and John” at Dance Theater Workshop. Much more mellow than Keigwin Kabaret, but I found it compelling in its sublelty and bittersweet humor. Choreographed by John Jasperse and featuring him, Becky Hilton, and Jodi Melnick (all 43 years old, oddly enough), it dealt mainly with aging and dance: the dancer’s ‘aging’ body; how changing self-esteem and increasing self-knowlege alters how you present yourself and what you’re willing to do during a performance (after Jasperse asks her to do the project, Melnick goes through a long, humorous litany of problems she’s been having lately with her joints and muscles, and tells him there are certain things she doesn’t like to show anymore, such as her arms); the choreographer’s ‘aging’ mentality and how s/he’s perceived by critics and peers as “old” (at one point, Jasperse came out onstage naked, carrying a load of bricks, placed the bricks down and assembled them into a structure while another dancer read a critic’s review of his work, telling him he was too “formalist” and needed to loosen up); and the power and absolute necessity of maintaining friendships with each other over the years and across the miles (after Jasperse finishes his ‘building’ he walks to Melnick who stares down at his genitals questioningly, humorously, then they perform a beautiful pas de deux illustrating their mutual reliance on each other for physical and emotional support. Like the Forsythe and Young works I blogged about recently, this also was multi-media, using video projections, spoken word, and of course dance to explore its themes. While it was centered around dance, I still think many people could relate to the themes — to the process of aging, feeling your body begin to give, feeling “old” compared to the younger generation, maintaining friendships while people go their separate ways, etc.

Also, I just have to say, I just saw Melnick in another piece, Vicky Schick’s Plum House with Laurel Dugan, also at Dance Theater Workshop, and it blows my mind that she is 43. She looks soooo young. Not that 43 is not young of course! All three dancers did amazing things with their bodies, especially in the first part, where they’re spread out on the floor in various stretch poses. I, for one, could not have the turnout required to do some of that floor work…

Here is a picture of the lobby, where they have a splendid chocolate bar! It was the most crowded I’ve ever seen it, and I think the shows sold out all nights, so hooray for them!

Finally, I just want to point out that Dance Theater Workshop has an interesting little thing on their MySpace blog. In their playbills, they pose a series of questions about the performance you’re there to see, titled “Cat Got Your Tongue?” They are: 1) How did the body move?; 2) How did you feel during the dance?; 3) How was the piece organized?; 4) What was the dancers’ relationship to each other, to the audience?; and 5) What, if anything, do you think the artist wanted to communicate with you? I think they’re interesting questions designed to make you think about what you just saw, thereby getting more out of it. Sometimes, oftentimes, modern dance is difficult to make sense of for the average viewer, which is the main reason, I think, why modern dance does not draw the audiences that ballet and other kinds of dance do. I feel like I get more out of a performance after I blog about it, so I think DTW’s MySpace blog is a potentially wonderful tool.

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Gender Trouble

I don’t want to violate anyone’s privacy so am talking in very general terms, but something that happened at work recently kind of made me go ugh. One of my colleagues is pregnant and, about two weeks ago, a bunch of us were having lunch together and someone asked her the sex of her unborn baby and she said she didn’t yet know but was hoping it would not be a girl. Another co-worker, somewhat shocked, cried out, “why?” Pregnant colleague said she already had a two-year-old girl and she and her sister didn’t get along so well and she didn’t want to repeat that.

Shocked co-worker (whom I’ll call Alison) then said, “ohhhh, I dunno, there are some … uh, issues … with having a younger boy and older girl…”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, because he’ll look up to her and want to be like her and imitate her and everything, and sometimes you just don’t know what to do…”

I must have looked really confused, so she gave an example. The other day, she said, she’d taken her kids (little girl is 7, boy is 5) shopping for beach attire for an upcoming trip to Florida. They were looking at shoes and the boy expressed a strong preference for a pair of turquoise crocs. “Turquoise!!!” she emphasized. She tried to explain to him that no, he just couldn’t have such a color, but he couldn’t understand why. So, she pointed out to him the lovely shit brown and puke green varieties and told him how much she’d LOVE to buy him one of those beauties! His eyes started to well with tears. “He only wants what his sister has,” she said. “What could I say? I mean, he only wants to be like her; it’s just a phase!”

I was wondering why it was such a big deal to just let him wear what he wanted since he was only five, when someone else said her mother-in-law told her she should start dressing her daughter in feminine clothes so the little girl would have more “self-respect.” Fortunately, to this everyone laughed.

“But but but, I can’t buy him the turquiose shoes,” Alison went on, “I mean, I just can’t; he’d be the laughingstock … he’ll start wanting stuff like that all the time and everyone will make fun of him at school.” To this, no one said anything.

So, as I said, that was about two weeks ago. Yesterday, the kids were on spring break so Alison brought them to the office. We have a little work station outside of my office, with a couch and a little lounge area, and she thought it would be a perfect place to park them (her office is just another door down the hall, so she’s close too). She brought them into my office to introduce me, since we’d be next-door neighbors for a couple of hours.

Hehehe. SO CUTE!!! “Say hello to Tonya, you guys,” Alison said. The girl, whom I’ll call Jennifer, walked in and shyly said hi. The boy, whom I’ll call … Marcelo … no, just kidding 🙂 Just kidding! I just imagine that he was a very fun little boy too 🙂 🙂 … — actually the little boy looked more like Angel, who had to be the coolest little kid as well 🙂 … Okay, okay I’ll call this little boy Michael.

So Michael shouts out, “Hi Tonya!!!” with an ear-to-ear grin. Alison and I giggled. “Okay, let’s go out here, guys,” she said taking them to the work station. Jennifer promptly took her pink backpack off, pulled out a Curious George book, sat on the couch, and began reading.

“Hey Tonya! I’m gonna make you some pictures, okay?” Michael yelled out, grabbing a pink highlighter and a packet of post-its.

“Shhhh, honey,” Alison said, “she’s working.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I like pictures,” I said.

A few seconds later, he was in my office posting little yellow squares bearing pink scribbly designs all over the place — on the sides and front of my desk, my computer stand, the bottom shelf of the bookcase — anywhere he could reach. “Oh, pretty,” I said, which made him scribble and post even faster.

“Oh honey!” Alison said entering my office. “No, this is, it’s a mess.”

“No no, it’s okay,” I laughed.

“Sorry,” she mouthed at me and took him back outside.

A few seconds later I heard the copy machine going crazy.

“Mommy!” Jennifer called out. I peeked outside just in time to practically collide with Michael.

“Hey Tonya! Here, I want you to have this,” he said handing me a piece of paper.

“What is that?” Alison said, running up.

“This is my dad’s office people,” he explained to me, pointing at a list of names. “Mom, I made 1,000 copies!”

“Honey, there’s personal information on there, including everyone’s passwords, we can’t just give those out to people,” she said exasperated, trying to figure out how to stop the copy machine.

“Mom, I really think that Tonya needs to have it,” he said. So cute!

I thanked him for thinking of me and walked back into my office to let her get things sorted out in the work station.

“I know, Mom, it’s just that I’m SO excited,” I overheard him say.

Minutes later:
“Hey Tonya!”

I peeked out my office door to see Michael now sitting at the work station computer.

“I’m working on this computer. My mom said I could!”

“Wow, that’s great!” I looked at the screen. He was playing paper dolls. There was a figure of a grown woman, not a little girl, wearing a black bra and underwear. So far, he’d given her a beautiful diaphonous light blue chiffon-looking scarf knotted around her neck. “Wow, that’s a very pretty scarf,” I said approaching him.

“She’s going to the store! She needs to put on her shoes!” he said using the cursor to drag a pair of black pumps over to her feet.

“She needs to put on more than that,” Alison said, flatly, now standing behind us. “It’s just a phase,” she whispered to me while gathering his things. “Come on, honey, let’s go back to Daddy’s office. He has a full-time secretary…”

And then he was off 🙁 My little buddy! True, I would not have got a single thing done yesterday, but oh he was just so cute. I want one!!! Where do I get one!!!

Today, Alison again made a point of telling me he was just going through a phase and that he was just into whatever his sister was, she’d found the paper dolls on the internet and dressed them all the time and he was just imitating her, etc. etc. When pregnant co-worker popped into my office to chat, Alison told her the whole story of yesterday, and they both said, almost in unison, “oh it’s just a phase.”

But why does this have to be a ‘phase’? Is Jennifer just going through a ‘phase’ too? Is Jennifer’s example forcing a false construct on him and is that construct somehow more true for her? I personally would much rather my son be into wearing turquoise shoes to the beach and decorating the room with pink and yellow designs and dressing paper women in chiffon scarves than pretending to blow off his friends’ heads with toy guns. But then he might be taunted by his lovely peers… which obviously no one wants. I don’t have any kids yet, but if and when I do, I’d like to think that I can teach them to think independently, experiment with identities, and stand up to peer pressure… but maybe it’s a lot harder than I think…

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Freedom To Be Who You Are: Isn't That What Dance Is About?

My favorite part of Dancing With the Stars last night was watching Tony Dovolani and… Kim was it?… dance to Josh Groban’s live singing. I was getting a bit bored with the show since it was a lot of singing and not a lot of dancing and so was focused on my computer until I peeked up at the screen and saw the lovely lyrical number they were doing — which is why I didn’t get the name of the female dancer; just know she was one of the blondes… Anyway, I just love that kind of dance; it was closest to a Waltz I guess but resembled more of a lyrical contemporary piece with the beautiful ballet costume (light-colored underlying leotard with diaphonous chiffon pieces strewn about for the skirt) and pretty bare feet.

Funny, I’d wanted to do the exact same thing — balletish costume with leotard and chiffon and dance in bare feet — for my first showcase (our music was Take My Breath Away, Jessica Simpson version — so a soft, lyrical rhumba that would easily lend itself to that kind of style), but my then teacher pronounced emphatically, “NO. BARE FEET AND BALLET CLOTHES ARE NOT BALLROOM.” Okay then. Rules and labels and narrow-minded thinking. Love them all; can’t get enough of them. Sorry, not to be cranky, and I did wake up with a bit of a headache today… I know that dance instructors are excited about teaching us the rules that they’ve taken such pains to learn. But I wish they would understand that when you’re a lawyer and you deal all day with Rules, you want to come to your dance studio at night and just bask in the atmosphere of creative freedom that surrounds you there, or that should. I’m a lawyer all day; let me be meeeee in the evening please please…

Anyway, the second contestant to go was, as I expected, Shandi — just because I know people didn’t like her. I actually thought her Jive was quite good. Those Jive kicks are HARD. It’s very difficult to get that bounce, kick, bounce, kick just right, and she did pretty well with them, especially for a beginner. I was also kind of disappointed to see Leeza in the bottom two since I thought she improved so much from the first night. I guess people have their favorites from the get-go. I also think people just love to judge others; couch potatos are probably the best at that. Dancing is frigging hard; I’d love to see the most judgmental of the spectators (I think Sylvia Plath called such people “the peanut-munching crowd”) get off their lazy butts and try.

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Six Weeks!!!

 

Just six weeks til ABT‘s opening night at the Met!!!! Unfortunately that means, it’s only five weeks til my little thing…

 

so not ready. Just sitting here having lunch and trying to go over my choreography in my head and getting really frustrated because I keep forgetting stuff — especially the small stuff. It’s all the silly basics — the slow quick quick slows, the simple box steps, that I can’t remember, not the big things like lifts and fun tricks. I guess that’s normal — when you know something hard is coming you memorize everything around it because you know you have to be ready and psyched up for it, but it’s the little simple basics — which direction they start in, how many there are, which set is slow slow quick quick and which is slow quick quick slow, etc., that you forget. And we don’t even have all the choreography done. I keep telling myself if I’m not ready, it’s okay, I’ll just sit it out this time, enjoy watching my friends, keep this routine for next time, and give myself plenty of time to learn. But I know how mad at myself I’ll be if I wimp out!

I guess I will have to think of my prize for getting through this as the top picture 🙂 : just relaxing in my seat, having champagne and hanging out with ABT friends during intermission, watching my favorite dancers in the world 🙂

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New School, Cheese, Juilliard, Twyla Tharp, Alastair Macaulay, Paulina Porizkova, and Blackpool Tickets!!

 

Could this post have a longer title?? I just had a crazy weekend… Friday night, my friend Alyssa’s roommate, who is getting her MFA in drama at the New School, appeared in a series of one act plays as part of the school’s student showcase. So we went for support. It was a lot of fun and reminded me of my college days when we would go to downtown Tucson to watch small, but brilliant, theater. My favorite one-act of the night was the one Alyssa’s roommate was in, called “Desire Desire Desire,” by Christopher Durang. It was a riff on Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar” and made me burst out in laughter several times, which I needed since I’ve been kind of stressed lately about dance showcases and other stuff… That also reminded me of Tucson because I remember being introduced to Durang (as I was to so many other playwrights) by some miniscule hole in the wall’s terrific production of “Beyond Therapy” which a friend of a friend was in as well. Fun memories.

Anyway, perhaps the funniest part of the night happened after the performance, during the post-production party. They brought out this lovely display of food, which everyone got a little over-excited about. Apparently no one, including me, had eaten dinner, so the table became a bit overcrowded — particularly the cheese platter (cheese being more filing to an empty stomach than fruit and sweets perhaps…) Well, there was only one cheese tray and a bit of a non-verbal fight actually erupted over it, mainly between two little old ladies, but others, including me I have to confess, got a bit into it as well. This one lady just could not figure out how to work the tongs, which, being made of cheap plastic, ended up breaking, so she stood there frowning trying to figure out how to politely take some cheese. People tried to wait patiently in line while she just stood looking around helplessly, and I for one was getting hungry. Then this other little old lady came from nowhere and basically pushed first lady out of the way, I guess assuming she was done (?), then picked up the broken tongs and looked sadly at them. She tried to slice into the brie with one half of the tong but was taking forever and making a real mess. While we were all trying to be patient, out of nowhere came this guy who, apparently not realizing there was a long cheese line, walked right up behind the lady with the half tong, reached with his fork out right over her head, and began jabbing around at the gouda cubes. When the lady turned around to give him a dirty look, thereby taking more time out of her brie-slicing mission, first lady came pushing her way back through the crowd with another pair of tongs, which she promptly broke on her first attempt to get at a mozzarella ball. That’s when it got ugly. After much harrumphing, people just began reaching over heads, in front of faces, grabbing with their bare hands whatever they could get. Wine cups went flying. First lady, practically in tears over the tongs, picked up an entire goat cheese ball and plopped it onto her plate. “She’s going to get constipated,” Alyssa said shaking her head. Anyway, next time I’ll have to remember to eat before the play, especially if there is an after-party. Above pic is of Alyssa, who is smiling brightly because she ended up with a bit of cheese after all!

Last night I went to another student performance, this one by dancers in the MFA program at Juilliard. The first was a new modern piece by Susan Marshall, the second (and my favorite of the evening) was Twyla Tharp’s Deuce Coupe — a combination of swingy jazz and traditional ballet set to Beach Boys music, and the third a beautifully haunting piece called Soldiers’ Mass by Jiri Kylian. It was my first time seeing the Tharp, which makes sense since this is the first time it’s been performed in NY since 1992 and I haven’t been here that long. I love her work the more I see of it, even with non-professional students performing, and I’d love to see Alvin Ailey do this one. She’s so fun, so funny, and I love how she is able to combine different dance styles to sometimes humorous, sometimes thought-provoking, but always entertaining effect. I know some see her as ‘poppy’ and roll their eyes at the mention of her name, but I stand by my thoughts that if anyone’s work can be used to take off from the current (and hopefully long-lasting!) ballroom craze to revive popular interest in ballet, it is hers.

At the end of Saturday night, I realized that, although I miss seeing all the theater I used to, as I get older I prefer dance. I guess I feel like I can relax and just let my senses take over — listen to the beautiful music and watch the beautiful movement and let it take me wherever it does; I don’t have to listen really intently for each spoken word fearing I may miss something crucial to understanding something else later on.

 

This is a picture of Lincoln Center, which is currently under construction. Normally, they have a walkway lined with benches passing over 66th Street and connecting Lincoln Center to Juilliard, which is on the side of the street where I’m standing to take the picture. Stupidly, I forgot they were doing construction until I was in the plaza at Lincoln Center, wondering where in the world that bridge went and how I was going to get over the Juilliard! I hate construction — especially since I really liked that bridge! I mean, I like the idea of revitalization, I just wish they could do it, like, overnight!

 

Today’s New York Times’ Arts and Leisure section contains the first real article I’ve seen by the new chief dance critic, Alastair Macauley. There was a bit of controversy caused by his appointment because of his sex and the fact that he’s from London, not New York (thus arguably bypassing several female critics far more familiar with the New York dance scene). So, since there will probably be a lot of scrutiny of his first few writings, let’s join in and make him feel REALLY welcome, ha ha! Just kidding 🙂 Anyway, this article is on the current Romeo and Juliet trend: the ballet is being performed by both ABT and the New York City Ballet this upcoming season; ABT is doing the 1965 version by Sir Kenneth MacMillan (my favorite!!!), and NYCB will be doing a new version choreographed by their artistic director Peter Martins. Kristin Sloan of the Winger (and a NYCB dancer of course!) has helped put together a behind-the-scenes video of the upcoming production, which can be viewed on the NYCB website, here. I also linked to it in my blogroll, on the right, under Dance: Ballet, etc. It’s a lot of fun to watch and see how the dancers learn to sword-fight and all that great stuff, so do check it out! Click here to read her post where she talks about it.

So, I guess that’s my biggest complaint about the Macaulay piece — he neglected to mention Sloan’s new exciting project, but then I am partial to her 🙂 The piece centered on placing the ballet within it’s historical context and comparing the different versions over the years both to each other and to some theatrical, non-dance, versions. He says it’s appropriate for him to write about this ballet as his first piece for the paper because this was the ballet that originally made him fall in love with the art form. I definitely hear him on that! Same with me 🙂

He starts off saying he thinks the ballet has been so oft re-choreographed because of the “popular idea . . . that in any case dance is all about sex.” I didn’t know that was a popular idea, and I’d thought of that ballet as being more about romance and doomed love and all that, but maybe that’s just me… But overall, a good article and I learned several new things — one being that the Nureyev version had Mercutio come back to life as a ghost to haunt Juliet and talk her into her final actions! He also talks about different dancers’ interpretations of the roles: Lynn Seymour, MacMillan’s original Juliet from the sixties, for example, danced a rather ‘naughty’ balcony scene fraught with sexual tension. When he’d asked the ballerina why she’d made that artistic choice, she said that she was emulating Judy Densch in the Zefferelli film version! The thing that most struck me though was, when describing Margot Fonteyn’s take on the part, he mentioned she was 56 when he saw her perform. I know she danced all the way up until she was in her mid-sixties, and I wonder why ballet dancers today retire SO young? If she could dance for so long, why not everyone?

I also saw in the Times a full-page ad for ABT!

 

Under each principal photo, they put a little blurb by a critic praising the dancer 🙂 Awesome advertising!

Finally in the Times, Style section this time, was a little story on Paulina Porizkova going to get a pedicure in a SoHo salon.

 

I thought it was funny because I’m pretty sure it was written before she got booted off DWTS (there was only a small parenthetical blurb mentioning it and most of the piece dealt with her new status as dancer and novelist — she has her first novel due out soon, apparently). It was cute, and I’m really glad they still decided to run it after she, unfairly dammit!!! 🙂 got kicked off.

Finally (and then I’m almost done for the night, I swear), I booked my plane ticket for Blackpool! I’m so excited! But it was a little too stressful, I hate to admit. Ever since 9/11 I have this crazy stupid nervousness of flying, and I say crazy and stupid both because it has been so long since everything happened and I just feel like I should be so over it by now, and because I really do love to travel and this obviously hinders that. For the first couple of years afterward, I wouldn’t even fly — I just kept taking trains and going on cruises — the latter of which can get ridiculously expensive, especially if you’re just using the ship as a mode of transportation and not appreciating all of the amenities like the entertainment and food and all. I started flying a few years ago when, believe it or not, I had to go to a dance competition in Florida and couldn’t take off all the time from work needed to take the 30-hour-each-way Amtrak. So, I guess dance got me flying again 🙂 I’ve since taken many flights, and I guess I’m okay once we’re in the air, but it’s just sitting on that runway thinking… ugh! It actually has been good for me to read the Winger and Matt’s blog and see all the fearless ABT people flying all over creation — makes me feel like if they can do it, everyone can do it, I can do it, ‘there’s nothing to fear but fear itself’…